Business
The Sanhuri civil code plus a modern companies and investment regime
Companies are formed under Law 159/1981 or the newer one-person and simplified vehicles, with the General Authority for Investment (GAFI) as the central gateway. The 1948 Civil Code still supplies the law of obligations.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — National. GAFI administers company incorporation and investment incentives; the Financial Regulatory Authority supervises listed companies and non-bank finance.
Governing law
- Civil Code, Law 131/1948 — the Sanhuri code
- Companies Law 159/1981
- Investment Law 72/2017
- Commercial Code, Law 17/1999
- Competition Law 3/2005
In practice
Egypt is unusual in the region for having a genuinely deep body of commercial case law and academic doctrine, because the Sanhuri code has been litigated continuously since 1949. Investment Law 72/2017 consolidated incentives and created a one-stop shop at GAFI, and it matters commercially because it governs guarantees against nationalisation and the availability of investor-state arbitration. The Economic Courts, created in 2008, take most substantial commercial disputes and were designed specifically to reduce delay; practitioners treat the choice between an Economic Court and a general civil court as a strategic question. Interest is permitted and regulated by statute rather than prohibited, which distinguishes Egypt sharply from the Gulf.